Not that we ever believed right-wing lawmakers in the first place. But the cover’s been blown on all who claim that the extremist bills they introduce—uncannily similar from state to state—are the works of their own fertile but twisted minds.

This is a cross-post by Dustin Beilke from PR Watch.

Today, hundreds of state legislators from across the nation will head out to an island resort off the coast of Florida to a unique “education academy” sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). There will be no students or teachers. Instead, legislators, representatives from right-wing think tanks and for-profit education corporations will meet behind closed doors to channel their inner Milton Friedman and promote the radical transformation of the American education system into a private, for-profit enterprise.

Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national resource center on privatization and responsible contracting, sends us this.

It seems there’s no public service or piece of property that private companies are not eyeing as potential revenue streams.  While funding anti-government think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), companies like Corrections Corporation of America, Waste Management, Maximus, Intuit, Laidlaw, Northrup Grumman, Koch Companies, Macquarie Capital Advisers, Pinnacle West, and UnitedHealthcare are hoping to use government as their candy store.

Donna Gratehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.

A slate of bills introduced in the Arizona Legislature this session would wipe out public-sector unions in our state. If Gov. Jan Brewer (R) signs them into law, which is likely, they would ban collective bargaining by public employees, end automatic payroll deductions for dues and prohibit compensation for performing union duties. These measures go even further than the union-stripping bills that enraged Wisconsinites last year and, unlike in Wisconsin, Arizona police and fire unions would not be exempted.

Donna Gatehouse, who blogs at DemocraticDiva and elsewhere on all things Arizona, sends us this.

Arizona, as the pithy Jon Stewart put it a while back, is the “meth lab of democracy.” The Grand Canyon State has achieved international notoriety for legalizing guns in bars, SB1070 [anti-immigrant legislation], a Birther Bill, and of course, the antics of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, among other things.

With the state legislative season set to get under way next month, Virginia offers us a preview of what working family activists are up against. A story  in today’s The Washington Post explores some of the more than 50 bills “ghostwritten” for Republican state legislators by the extreme conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma (R) may be trying to deliver lumps of coal to Hoosier workers with so-called right to work legislation, but that didn’t discourage a chorus of worker carolers from offering Bosma a gift, along with a song of holiday cheer.

Marvin Bing, a member of the AFL-CIO Special Committee on Labor-Community Partnerships, sends us this report.

Tens of thousands of labor and civil rights activists on Saturday marched from the New York offices of Koch Industries, whose owners have supported restrictive voting legislation modeled by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing think tank funded by brothers David and Charles Koch. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who took part in the event, put it this way:

You can’t accomplish anything if you’re not prepared to fight.

Indiana Republican lawmakers—with the backing of the corporate-backed right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—are readying another push to ram through a so-called right to work bill. But there are two pieces of good news for Hoosier working families.

Marvin Bing, a member of the AFL-CIO Special Committee on Labor-Community Partnerships, sends us this report on a meeting of AFL-CIO constituency groups in Phoenix.

AFL-CIO constituency groups kicked off the “We Are One Moving America Forward” symposium late last week with a series of great speeches by William Lucy, Ben Jealous, George Gresham, Danny Ortega and Judith Browne-Dianis. A resounding theme: “We can’t let the 1 percent trick us into believing we are different—We are the 99 percent, we are one and if we don’t work together on issues that bring us together, we will fall together.” We are the people who fight for working families, we are the people who fight to protect our students, children, seniors and families. We are the labor movement and together with the community we are unbeatable.